Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

the fact that his father had been groundsman there for many years. Throughout King’s time at Grace Road from 1895 to 1900 the wickets were pitched from east to west, parallel to the pavilion, rather than in their present, north-to-south alignment. Eric Snow writes that this was the case ‘for a time’, but perhaps it had been so ever since the ground was opened in 1878, for James King recalled being taken to see the Australians play that year and Spofforth bowling ‘from the railway end’, which must have been from the East. Among the four Colts to whom the county gave trials in 1895 were King and Albert Knight (two and a half years his junior), who became lifelong friends. Knight was tried first, in the second Championship and first home game of the season, a victory over Nottinghamshire. King was tried in the fourth match, against Essex, which began on 3 June, on which day the main news in Leicestershire was that a child had been run over at Moira by a horse, and nationally that Gladstone, who was celebrating the 62nd anniversary of his maiden speech in the Commons, ‘although much better this morning, is confined to his room by a cold’. There was ‘a large gathering of spectators in the pretty little ground at Leyton’, but the pitch was, according to Wisden , ‘fast and inclined to be fiery’, enabling Harry Pickett to obtain statistically the greatest bowling performance ever suffered by Leicestershire, for he took all ten wickets at a cost of only 32 runs in a total of 111 (to improve on his previous best performance of just four for 6). King came in, before lunch on the first day, last but one, but ‘shaped well’ and battled his way to 12 to become the only player not Apprenticeship 19 The Grace Road ground in about 1890.